In recent years, specialty food products particularly Mexican food products have become increasingly popular in the United States. Moreover, the increasing time demands upon families has caused an increase in the demand for heat and serve products. Particularly popular are frozen enchiladas, burritos, and other types of food products such as egg rolls that are offered for sale in the frozen food section of supermarkets. These foods are often sold individually or in packages containing several enchiladas or burritos. Typically the products need only be removed from the package, heated and served.
Historically, such products have been prepared manually by physically folding the tortillas or other dough sheets around a filling. This manual approach is time consuming and costly. In manually making a burrito or enchilada, a tortilla is folded longitudinally inward over the food filling from at least one edge. These longitudinal folds form the end folds of the folded food product, and such folds serve to prevent the filling from leaking after the food product is folded. After the longitudinal folds are made, the tortilla is folded in a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal folds. Such folding usually proceeds sequentially, folding a portion of the tortilla upon itself seriatim from one end of the tortilla to the other. Alternatively, the tortilla may be folded in half and then folded upon itself. Of course, other methods of folding may be utilized to provide a more compact food product or to allow for easier or more efficient manufacture.
As the demand for frozen food products such as burritos, enchiladas and others has increased there has developed a great need for a fast and fully automatic process for the continuous preparation of high quality folded food products. The novel apparatus and method of applicant's invention as described herein satisfies this demand for a fully automated procedure. With the applicant's invention, labor costs and personnel requirements are greatly reduced. Tortillas are placed upon the conveyor by a laborer, and the filling and folding of the food product is done automatically, without assistance from human operators. Further, because the applicant's process is continuous and completely automatic, operator handling of the food product and its ingredients is eliminated, thereby enabling superior operation sanitation and cleanliness over hand processes.